When the nominations for the 2009 Corporate Hall of Shame
are unveiled, it should come as no surprise to see Mercury Marine and parent
company Brunswick Corporation leading a very crowded pack.
While Mercury Marine, the Fond du Lac, WI-based engine
builder, appeared to be an early favorite to take top honors in the Most
Offensive Outsourcing category, it now appears that executives of Mercury’s parent
company, Brunswick Corp., are also on track to take home the prized Bernard
Madoff Lifetime Achievement Award.
According to ‘The
Twisted Saga of Mercury Marine,’ a study just released by the
non-profit Institute for Wisconsin’s Future (IWF), top executives at Lake
Forest, IL-based Brunswick Corp. orchestrated a competition between Wisconsin
and Oklahoma to see which state could provide the lowest labor costs and the
highest tax incentives.
Meanwhile, Mercury
Marine/Brunswick didn’t pay a dime of income tax in Wisconsin since 2000, according to the IWF
report and records obtained from the Department of Revenue.
Click here
to read the full report.
“The story of Mercury Marine is a sad documentary on how large corporations can reward executives for failure while dismantling the manufacturing structures that generate real value,” said the IWF report, which was particularly critical of Brunswick CEO Dustin McCoy, who collected over $10 million in compensation between 2006 and 2008, while 5,300 workers lost their jobs and the company’s stock fell a whopping 71 percent.
